@ lance1988 - No, whatever the Puzzle Map reveals is a true location on the map. I suggest looking for matching landscapes. I remember where the tear is, and if my memory fails me, its at a crossroad. If this is not the mission your talking about, sorry, ignore my advice .

@ lance1988 - No, whatever the Puzzle Map reveals is a true location on the map. I suggest looking for matching landscapes. I remember where the tear is, and if my memory fails me, its at a crossroad. If this is not the mission your talking about, sorry, ignore my advice .

Haha. Thanks, I got it after realizing that I must scroll the map in a different direction. Is that fair?!?!?! Haha.

Okay, I've got another issue, now with Mission 5. Why is it that everytime I end my turn on the 3rd day, the game will meet a problem and crash? I've already patched it to 1.6. I started the game already patched, so that should not be the reason right? Please help.

I am having a very tough time with this campaign on Heroic, namely the infamous 3rd mission. I had no problem on Normal my first time through, and I have had no problem with the previous campaigns on Heroic.

My problem seems to be creating the best Raelag that the computer will allow. For my first attempt I was planning to go with Destructive Magic, Sorcery, Enlightenment and Luck, but unfortunately I was never offered Sorcery so when I got to mission 3 I had one blank primary skill space. In addition, I was never offered such important skills as Warlock's Luck (even though I had Soldier's Luck), Intelligence or Dark Ritual. And to make things worse, I received very few Knowledge increases as I leveled (I hit every skill up available in the 1st two missions).

So this left me at the start of mission 3 with a Raelag who had fairly strong spells (20 Spellpower), but only 90 mana (which is only good for 2 Empowered Implosions). In mission 3 you have to take the first city on Day 2 to have any chance, and there was no way I could beat the AI hero there who had large stacks of Assassins, Minos, Blood Maidens and Scouts, that were all spread out so that they could not be hit by area spells. The enemy hero must have been buffed to the teeth with artifacts too since it would have taken me 4 Empowered Implosions (if I even had that amount of mana, which I didn't) just to whittle his stack of Minos down to a reasonable size. The absolute best I was able to do was lose with him having only 2 Minos left. Even if I could somehow pull off a win I would have been so crippled that another enemy hero would have wiped me up the next day. I even tried attacking the first city with Shayla, and she didn't do too bad with her dark magic (less mana intensive; she had 80 mana pool), but I still lost.

So I started the whole campaign over again and this time I tried for Destructive Magic, Sorcery, Luck and Summoning Magic, but I wasn't offered Destructive Magic until mission 2 when already level 15! At level 17 with one level to go before the cap and I still needed Expert Summoning (for Phoenix), Master of Conjuration, Arcane Training (I did have Erratic Mana) and any of the 3 possible Destructive masteries (e.g., Mastery of Fire or Ice). So I think this build would not work either on mission 3 and I will need to restart again. On my third attempt I think I will try Destructive, Sorcery, Summoning and Enlightenment (instead of Luck), but of course I will be at the mercy of what the computer offers me.

Any one having similar problems with this campaign? Quite frustrating. I wonder why Warlocks (a caster hero) get such a small mana pool.

My third attempt on Heroic and man this scenario is tough. This time I have a decent build for Raelag - almost the ideal that I was aiming for. He has Destructive, Sorcery, Enlightenment and Summoning as his additional primary skills, and he picked up all of the main spells (Conjure Phoenix, Empowered Implosion, Arcane Armor, Phantom Forces, Empowered Meteor Shower) in the previous scenario. He has 165 mana pool which is ok. The only issues are that he only has Basic Sorcery and no Destructive "specialization" (e.g., Ice or Fire) so far. This makes him weaker than the level 22 AI heroes that bombard you non-stop at the start of the scenario. So he takes significant troop loss each encounter. The enemy heroes can take out a full stack of your hydras or minos in one hit, so it really hurts. I also built Shadya up pretty well, with Puppet Master.

The main question is what to do with Shadya at the start. You really need to focus all troops with Raelag to defend the first city that you capture, as you will be attacked by at least 3 tough heroes in the first few days. I have just been running Shadya around trying to keep her away from the enemy heroes (who WILL go after her). I just gave her enough troops to survive any potential encounters with lesser enemy heroes. I'm hoping to somehow survive these first few weeks with a few troops left. The other problem is that the enemy AI gives you no chance to take mines early on (except for the close sulfur mine) so I have been without wood or ore, and have only been able to build hydras and citadel.

I would be interested in hearing any other strategies from people who have completed this scenario on heroic using patch 1.6.
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I remember that when I played it(heroic) I had no warlock's luck yet but sorcery, destructive and enlightenment. Summoning I did not need since I had the right destructive and adequate mana, what might have made things easier is logistics. Unfortunately it's been a while and I do not remember specifics..
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Have you ever tried blind fold archery? You don't know what you're missing!

I've come to the conclusion that Mission 3 is not possible on heroic difficulty using patch 1.6. Even if I have the perfect build for Raelag and I have him guarding the first city, there is no way to keep Shadya alive. You can only run her around in a circle for so long until she eventually gets sandwiched in between 2 tough enemy heroes. Maybe it would be possible if there was a sanctuary that you could park her in.

There aren't enough troops for the 2 of them and there are way too many ridiculous enemy heroes to deal with. I'm really disappointed because I wanted to continue on heroic since lower difficulties are no challenge at all. But this mission is just way over the top compared to every other previous mission on heroic.

Such an uneven campaign on Heroic difficulty. I had to lower the difficulty to Hard to defeat mission 3 as I found it impossible on Heroic with 3 different Raelag builds (I never was able to obtain Light Magic, ie., Resurrection, in any of the builds). In my final Raelag build (Destruction, Summoning, Enlightenment, Sorcery) I found Summoning Magic to be useless as I never used it. Shadya was actually the more effective hero with higher spell power and Puppet Master.

The final mission was very anticlimactic on Heroic. I gave all units to Raelag except for the 2/3 of the Deep Hydras which I gave to Shadya (that's all she needed for perfect fights against all neutral stacks she encountered). I took Raelag down into the NW underground area, and Shadya into the SE underground area. After defeating all neutral stacks until I got to the portals, and portaling Raelag over to Shadya, it was very easy to take them both to the final garrison. I barely lost a single unit. Even against 4 large stacks of Pit Lords (the toughest fight by far) all I needed to do was use Deep Hydras only with Shadya and Puppet Master the final stack until my hydras eventually regenerated fully.

All enemy heroes on the way surrendered to my hero after their first turn, including the final hero! I didn't even have a fight. I didn't bother with the enemy towns as I just wanted to get out of this campaign and on to the next.

Hard to believe how easy every mission has been on Heroic except for mission 3 of this campaign. They need to balance it better.
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I keep hearing that all you need to do is hide somewhere during the tournament. THIS IS A LIE!! Well, okay, but it does NOT work every time. The first several times I tried the mission, I tried hiding (next to the dragons a few times, and in the middle of the weakest opponents a few times), but the one who starts out right next to me (who is usually one of the strongest) still came straight for me! I can usually beat him, but then the second one usually finishes me off; it was pure chance that the other strong one fought everyone else before me, and even so I barely made it, having like 15 Minotaurs left in the end. (Oh, and by the way, this was on Easy!)
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It's really not recommended to use rage of the elements. EVER. I don't think it's even possible to win those games without destructive, in tote the requirements include destructive.
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Have you ever tried blind fold archery? You don't know what you're missing!

I would appreciate any advice for this mission. I feel like Alice in Wonderland with the portals. And one of the objectives is to kill Grawl. Is this really necessary to go on to the next mission? Even though Raeleg is tough, Grawl's army looks like it would make for a really close fight.

TIA,
Morgan Le Fay

"Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again."
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
The Lord of the Rings
Gandalf and Frodo Baggins, Chapter 'The Shadow of the Past'.

I'm afraid you have to, just make sure he doesn't find Shadya through the portals as you chase him If you don't have logistics you may find it harder to corner him.
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Have you ever tried blind fold archery? You don't know what you're missing!

I have rather "annoying" problem with the mission 3 (patch 1.6, hard difficulty). The demon armies won't invade me. They spawned (as they should) when I got 2, 4 and 6 castles, but they just didn't do anything.

I already had to expend a decent number of troops to take the two castles, and since then I've had a steady stream of heroes with at least equal armies attacking me.

Two have had mass decay, which seems grossly overpowered to me, particularly being cast at the very beginning of combat.

I just finished one battle with literally no more than one assassin left, and now another two heroes have appeared! It's the middle of the week and I've already build most of the creature buildings, so it's not like I can do any more recruiting. This is already my sixth time going through, and I'm getting a bit fed up.
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In that mission, I did it by capturing the two cities, and rush towards Dragons, and, after the First Demon Army was defeated, captured one of the Enemy Towns behind the Portals.

I left Shadya to guard one of the Main Towns, with the Armies of both Towns. (I kept one town empty, as the Stupid AI will always try to attack the worst defended of your towns... or at least, it tried with me).

So, as soon as I captured at town on the other side of the Portal, I left it empty and moved north and captured another. By that time the Second Demon Army appeared and simply went for the (empty) town I had just captured.

Raelag met them and Lucky Meteor Shower (WITH Slippers) did the rest. The rest was quite easy, took the other castles (and the Third Demon Army), with the Reinforcements from the Souscar towns.
For the last town, Raelag was joined with Shadya's army from the two basic towns and... well, you can guess the rest.

You didn't specify a few things. First of all, at what difficulty level are you playing? And secondly, how did you develop your Heroes (Raelag and Shadya) during the two missions before? What level, skills, etc ...?

I recently played through it on normal and had no problems whatsoever. Actually quite a pushover.

Anyway, regarding the Demon army not attacking: it seems that it is set to attack one of the dungeon towns. When the visiting slot of the garrison is occupied, it seems it can't find a path to it, or something. In the console you will see a message that the game tried to find a path to a certain location for that Hero, but didn't find one at that time. And so it remains idle in the place it's standing currently.

I have a problem with campaign 2. After conquering all orange towns, finding tears of Asha and building Mother of darkness, upon hitting "Close" i get an error message and am thrown out of the game. I've got latest patch (1.6) and Win XP 64.
Anyone had similar problem?
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